What's new

A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Extended Edition -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Robert Harris

Archivist
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 1999
Messages
18,312
Real Name
Robert Harris
How many films truly endure decades and the test of time?

Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, The Wizard of Oz, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gone with the Wind…

Think about it.

How many films are purposefully passed down from parent to child, generation to generation, as something that has attained a sense of wonderment, and endures that passage of time.

From the masterworks of J.R.R Tolkien, filmmaker Peter Jackson has created a motion picture trilogy that not only has that quality to endure, but now Warner Home Video has brought Mr. Jackson’s work to Blu-ray as he wishes them to be seen.

The imagery and audio of these new editions are not only problem free, but have a very special majesty and exultation about them-- perfect in every frame.

Make no mistake. The new Blu-rays of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy on Blu-ray are a ceaseless wonder that will survive the generations. They demand your attention.

Colin McKenzie would be pleased.

Very Highly Recommended.

RAH
 

Vincent_P

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2003
Messages
2,147
The "theatrical" Blu-ray was transfered from a 35mm film-out- so basically, you have a 2K Digital Intermediate for most of the film, that gets recorded back out to film, then they rescanned that outputted negative. If they went back to the 2K DI files here like Robert says they did, then this would be the intended color timing. When you do a scan/film-out/re-scan of the film-out, you're asking for anomalies to pop up.

Vincent
 

Worth

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2009
Messages
5,230
Real Name
Nick Dobbs
Why on Earth would they have done that? Wouldn't it have been both easier and cheaper to go straight from the DI?
 

Vincent_P

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2003
Messages
2,147
Originally Posted by Worth
Why on Earth would they have done that? Wouldn't it have been both easier and cheaper to go straight from the DI?
The first film wasn't completely finished as a DI. Between 70-80% of the film was, the rest color-timed photochemically, and the conversion from Super-35 to anamorphic was done optically. THE TWO TOWERS and THE RETURN OF THE KING, on the other hand, were completed entirely as DIs.

Vincent
 

Jarod M

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Aug 16, 2000
Messages
180
Originally Posted by Vincent_P
The "theatrical" Blu-ray was transfered from a 35mm film-out- so basically, you have a 2K Digital Intermediate for most of the film, that gets recorded back out to film, then they rescanned that outputted negative. If they went back to the 2K DI files here like Robert says they did, then this would be the intended color timing. When you do a scan/film-out/re-scan of the film-out, you're asking for anomalies to pop up.

Vincent
Some of these anomalies have been illustrated by several screenshots comparing the theatrical Blu-ray to the EE Blu-ray. It's not what most people were expecting, especially those people used to the DVDs and the theatrical Blu-ray. What's better? Obviously that's subjective, and some people will simply defer to whatever judgment has been made by the filmmakers, but based on the screenshots alone, it is perplexing to say the least.

Another question, which no one has really answered as far as I know, is whether FOTR matches up with the flashback shots in TTT.
 

Lord Dalek

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2005
Messages
7,093
Real Name
Joel Henderson
You got to understand Fellowship of the Ring was like the second or third movie ever to use a DI and they hadn't quite figured how to utilize it to its full potential. That said, I'd love to know exactly if this green cast only affects the DI scenes or is the whole movie?
 

cafink

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,044
Real Name
Carl Fink
Originally Posted by Vincent_P
The first film wasn't completely finished as a DI. Between 70-80% of the film was, the rest color-timed photochemically, and the conversion from Super-35 to anamorphic was done optically. THE TWO TOWERS and THE RETURN OF THE KING, on the other hand, were completed entirely as DIs.

Vincent
So, for the new Blu-ray, Warner went back to the DI for that 70-80% of the film? What about the rest of it? How was it transferred to Blu-ray? I know relatively little about how movies are transferred, and am trying to get a clear picture of what it entails in this case.
 

Douglas Monce

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2006
Messages
5,511
Real Name
Douglas Monce
Vincent_P said:
The first film wasn't completely finished as a DI.  Between 70-80% of the film was, the rest color-timed photochemically, and the conversion from Super-35 to anamorphic was done optically.  THE TWO TOWERS and THE RETURN OF THE KING, on the other hand, were completed entirely as DIs. Vincent
I think you have the ratio backwards. About 70% of the film was done with traditional photochemical color timing. A few select scenes were timed in a computer, really as a test for the future installments.DougEdit: I think you actually maybe right on the ratio, I found this on line, but can't verify how true it is.
About 3,100 shots (78% of the Super 35 film) were color graded at Colorfront in Wellington, NZ using 5D Colossus software after being scanned by an Imagica XE scanner full 2K resolution (2048*1536). The color-graded shots were then recorded on Kodak 5242 intermediate film by two Arri Laser film recorders at 10 bits per channel. Because only 78% of the film was digital, a digitally squeezed anamorphic print could not be made for the whole movie. Instead, the digital shots were recorded on an inter-negative hardmatted at 1.77:1, intercut with the non-digital original negative (which had been color timed by The Film Unit, NZ), and printed to 2.39:1 anamorphic Kodak film using an optical printer at Deluxe, LA. Fuji 3519-D was used for release prints.
However this would indicate that about 78% of the film was at least 3 very odd generations away from the the ON even before release prints were made, which might explain why the film looks so different from the other two on the theatrical blu-ray release.
 

Flemming.K

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
76
Does this "new look" represent the original theatrical look? I actually don't remember the movie looking anything like this in the intro sequence (talking about The Shire green cast comparison clip on Youtube).
 

Tom Logan

Second Unit
Joined
May 23, 2003
Messages
259
Originally Posted by Flemming.K
Does this "new look" represent the original theatrical look? I actually don't remember the movie looking anything like this in the intro sequence (talking about The Shire green cast comparison clip on Youtube).
Well, FOTR EE is showing in theaters across the country tonight, correct? Perfect opportunity for a comparison. :)
 

litlgi74

Auditioning
Joined
Jun 14, 2011
Messages
5
Real Name
John
There is no way the mountain snow scene should look like this or ever did in the theater!

8f2cb6c7_snow.gif
 

Robert Harris

Archivist
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 1999
Messages
18,312
Real Name
Robert Harris
I believe the point is that footage that went through the DI process is represented in the new Blu-ray as a scanned, combined and corrected element, meaning before recording out to a printing negative. Much of this would be dependent upon how the final printing negs were conformed. If a master negative combining DI footage with original negative was cut, that negative would have gone through two more generations before being printed for theatrical use. I'm presuming that the earlier Blu-ray was created by scanning an IP, which means that we're going back two generations to pre-record data.

RAH
 

PRO-630HD

Grip
Joined
Sep 24, 2010
Messages
20
Real Name
tim lamb
Robert, just to confirm the IP is 1 generation from the OCN, the IN is two generations from the OCN and a print is 4 generations way from the OCN.
 

Robert Harris

Archivist
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 1999
Messages
18,312
Real Name
Robert Harris
Originally Posted by PRO-630HD
Robert, just to confirm the IP is 1 generation from the OCN, the IN is two generations from the OCN and a print is 4 generations way from the OCN.
Correct. Normally, today, when you go to a theater and are not viewing a DI, you're watching a fourth gen element.

RAH
 

Mark Booth

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Aug 25, 1999
Messages
3,574
Everyone please leave Robert alone so he can actually sit down and watch the movies! The whole world is waiting to hear more of his few words about LOTR EE!

Robert, It has been suggested that a good way to compare color-timing changes is to compare flashback scenes used in the later films with the same scenes in FOTR.

Look, there I went and didn't follow my own advice.

Mark
 

I know I talked about this, and I'm bringing it up again..not because I'm complaining but because I'm truly wondering what causes it. I noticed it on the TE blu-rays of LOTR and other transfers (mostly dvds), including the blu-ray of It's a Wonderful Life. What causes faint vertical lines at the edge of the picture when the monitor is set to no overscan? Is it on the film? Is it because there is no more data? A digital artifact? On scope movies, it even cuts into the black bars. Thanks.
 

Robert Harris

Archivist
Reviewer
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 8, 1999
Messages
18,312
Real Name
Robert Harris
I'm not going to be able to find the time to view all of these.

That said, if someone would care to give me timecodes from previous releases, I'd be happy to give things a quick look.

As far as the same footage being used in multiple films for flashbacks, since I don't know the filmmakers, I'm unable to say that
they didn't want things a certain way. Or it could be an error. Not an expert on these films. Far too new.

So far I'm very pleased.
 

Mark Booth

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Aug 25, 1999
Messages
3,574
More fuel for the fire... A video featuring Jackson and Lesnie discussing the digital color grading done to the theatrical release of FOTR.



After watching that video, I find the color-timing on my theatrical edition Blu-rays to be a lot closer to what Jackson and Lesnie seemed to be after, versus the screen caps we are seeing (mostly on other sites) of the supposed extended edition Blu-rays. In the video, they discuss adding more of a golden hue to the shire (Hobbiton) to bring out the greens, rather than just pumping up the green. That golden hue is how the theatrical Blu-ray looks compared the extended edition screen caps.

Mark
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,815
Messages
5,123,806
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top